Revisit, redo, and recap

Monday: Last week started off with Blondie's sister and her family (husband and baby) coming for a visit. I came home from work on Monday and we took off to our local bar (it's totally baby-friendly, for as much as a bar can be baby-friendly) for some grub and beers. While we were sitting there chatting and relaxing, we decided a night out in Times Square was needed. We headed up in the horrendous heat to take in the lights and sounds of the craziest section of New York (which is saying A LOT).

One of the local businesses had taken over one of the huge electronic billboards - they had trained a camera on the crowd so basically you could see yourself on the huge screens of Times Square. The 4 of us spent literally about 15 minutes being giant jackasses and laughing our asses off at ourselves. Hey, if you can't laugh at yourself... BTW, it was all my idea to do this too!

Tuesday: I met back up with the group on Tues evening in Little Italy for some pasta dinner. It was a quick 15 minute train ride down, and my pasta con broccoli was killer. We split a caraffe (how do you spell that?) of wine and just enjoyed getting to catch up.

Wednesday: The family was off, but Sweetie J was ready for some action. She came to my office and hung out with me for awhile, before we headed over to Murray Hill to meet up with some of her friends from Brooklyn. Blondie joined us for a fabulous indian food dinner at the suggestion of her friend. The restaurant (Copper Chimney) was soooo good, and I think I made some pretty obscene noises as I slobbered over the lamb chops with yogurt sauce. Go me! Many bottles of beer, and after dinner was over, it was time to head to a local bar and party it up San Francisco style!

Thursday: Um, owies! I nursed a headache all day but sucked it up big time and headed out to meet up with Blondie, Slick and PFunk. They had flown in from Chicago (minus Blondie who just flat out lives here) early Thurs morning and had spent the day drinking beers, napping, and generally making me jealous. The 4 of us decided to hit our local cheap bar (hint: I'm going to marry Rudy's when it becomes legal to marry an inanimate object). PFunk and I managed to catch the eye of a very inebriated (very x very) lady who took it upon herself to try and be our BFF's. This is literally what I understood of what she said to us over the course of 20 minutes: chickpeas, pressure cooker, 3 pounds, helicoptor, Beyonce. The rest of her words ran together so hard - it was like madlibs without any clues.

PFunk and I literally pushed the guys out of the bar, we were trying to escape so bad. We headed down the street to our local sports bar to imbibe some more and split a plate of onion rings. PFunk had an awesome idea for Turkish Cuisine, so we headed there for dinner. Since I hadn't gotten my fill of lamb from the previous night, I got the lamb stuffed bell peppers - I was about to take a bath with them, they were so good.

Friday: 1 pm end time = Lombardi's pizza by 1:30. Such great pizza, and no wait time like Grimaldi's! Afterwards, we wandered through Chinatown and over to the Brooklyn Bridge - it was a gorgeous day for a walk over, and then we found a bar and had several beers while cooling down. We got a completely nutter bartender whom I wanted to adopt. His opinion: you haven't seen Central Park until you've been there after midnight. Also, if I went after midnight and got mugged, I could drink for free whenever I went into his bar. My opinion: It's almost worth it for free beer.

We caught the train back to the city and relaxed for a bit afterwards, before getting ready and heading out to Les Halles!!!! This is Tony Bourdain's restaurant (even though he isn't associated with it any longer - that I'm aware anyway). Our meal was so good - I got steak covered in foie gras. I'm aware that foie gras is a hot topic, and am always very hesitant to eat it. To be fair to me, it's only about the 3rd time in my life that I've had it - so it's not like I'm eating it out every single weekend. But I did have a lot of guilt afterwards, so I think I'll add it to my list of "no way jose". It's a shame it tastes so f'ing good.

After our meal, we headed out for more beers - we gave ourselves a curfew of 12:30 am which extended to 1 am rather quickly. We had a curfew for a good reason - and I'm glad we stuck to it because....

Saturday: STATUE OF LIBERTY AND ELLIS ISLAND TOUR!!! We were up and out of the house by 11 am to catch the train down to the tip of Manhattan. We waited in a line that was crazy big, but was absolutely worth it. We didn't have tickets to actually go up into the statues, but we got to completely wander all around the base of the statue. The boat ride over was beautiful and the views of the city skyline from the island was amazing. After the statue, we caught a second ferry boat to Ellis Island and went through the Immigration Museum. The exhibits were amazing, and it felt exhilirating to get a tiny sense of what people did to move to this country. Blondie and Slick were able to search for some of their relatives from the museum's database.

We caught the ferry back to Manhattan and enjoyed a pitcher of beer in the beer garden, before heading back to our hood for some pizza and a shower. At 8 pm that night, Slick's cousin caught up with us along Sweetie J and another buddy of ours from San Francisco. We went for tapas and enjoyed a beautiful Saturday night on a patio with many pitchers of Sangria.

Afterwards, off for beer! We hit up several bars before winding down the evening in a singing (not dueling) piano bar, serenading each other with heartfelt renditions of Bon Jovi, Journey, and showtunes. We got home around 4 am and decided food was in order. So I drug my drunk ass down to our 24 hour deli and proceeded to buy anything that wasn't nailed down.

Sunday: All of a sudden it was noon. WTF? How did that happen? I haven't slept past 7:45 am in about 5 years, but here we were. Blondie came to the rescue with a giant pot of coffee and then we headed out for greasy breakfast before catching the train to Central Park. It was crazy hot, so we found a tree, spread our blankets underneath, and rehydrated all afternoon with water.

We headed back to our hood early to buy some pies and snacks, and then it was to the apartment to start our party train off. 2 pitchers of margaritas later, it was time to head to our balcony to watch the fireworks show from there. HOW LUCKY ARE WE? As we watched millions of people trying to get out to the river to view the fireworks, all we had to do was step out our balcony door.

The fireworks were amazing. So good to finally see them in person. After the fireworks, we ordered in some more beer (and flaming hot Cheetohs) and drank the night away. My schedule is so f'ed up right now.

Today, everyone is gone. It's me and Blondie again. Le sigh. I'm going to try and get back to Chicago to visit Slick and PFunk in August, along with a trip to KY to visit the fam. Blondie is off to Arkansas to hang with his bro for a week, camping and fishing. And that's what we have to look forward to.

I'm in a down mood right now - I feel like I've had one of the top 5 weeks of my whole life this past week, and now it's back to work, work, work. It's Monday dread times 50000.

I think I need a vacation.

--K